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Slow progress raises doubts about government’s Syrian refugee pledge

Nine months after vowing to accept 1,300 refugees from war-torn Syria, only a few have arrived in Canada.

A Syrian refugee family from Aleppo finds shleter in Istanbul earlier this month. The UN has asked countries to help resettle some 100,000 additional Syrian refugees by the end of 2016 (BULENT KILIC / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Last July, a month after the United Nations made a dramatic plea for the international community to step in and accept Syrian refugees, Canada committed to accepting 1,300 of them by the end of 2014.

Nine months later, few if any have made their way here and some advocacy groups believe it will be impossible for Canada to fulfil its pledge.

The Immigration Ministry says no more than 10 government-sponsored Syrian refugees made their way to Canada in 2013. And it is unclear whether or not these refugees were part of the June pledge.

The small number of refugees — government or privately sponsored — to come to Canada to date highlights the long, complicated and sometimes frustrating process in sponsoring refugees from not just Syria, where about two million refugees have fled the civil war, but from other political hot spots as well.

The lack of progress comes at the same time as a new plea by the UN, asking countries to offer refuge to an additional 100,000 Syrians by the end of 2016. Canada has not yet said whether it will accept any more refugees beyond its original pledge.

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Ottawa announced with much fanfare in July 2013 that 200 of the “extremely vulnerable” Syrians would be sponsored by the government and identified by the UN's refugee agency, while 1,100 more would be sponsored privately.

“It was clear at the time of the announcement that there was no clear intention to make them arrive by the end of 2014,” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees. “We know that if you want people to arrive in the resettlement program . . . you have to make provisions to make that possible.”

That hasn’t happened, said Dench. “The resettlement program has become extremely complicated and difficult to negotiate both for sponsors and refugees.”

Further complicating the process is the fact that the government is exerting more control over sponsorship of refugees than in previous decades, said Dench. Previously, private sponsors could just go ahead and sponsor individuals. “Now the private sponsors have to wait for permission to do sponsorship,” she said.

Another factor is the complex paperwork and slow processing time within Canada. It can take up to nine months to be approved at the centralized Winnipeg office, Dench said.

“Sponsors report it can take up to six months to prepare an application,” she said.

In explaining the delay, Ottawa says that to date very few Syrian refugees have been referred by the UN's refugee agency to any receiving country, including Canada, and the organization has been focusing on “finding a political solution to the crisis and meeting the basic needs” of the refugees.

“We are committed to resettling 1,300 Syrians by the end of 2014, with 1,100 spaces allocated for privately sponsored refugees,” said Alexis Pavlich, press secretary for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander.

“We have begun to resettle the most vulnerable, and are actively working with the (UN refugee agency) so we can fulfil our existing commitments, and then look at doing even more,” she said. “Hundreds of private sponsorship opportunities remain. We encourage sponsorship agreement holders to do their part to help displaced Syrians as well.”

Canada has also contributed $630 million in aid to Syrian refugees, Pavlich pointed out.

The Syrian Canadian Council is also disappointed with the slow influx of refugees. “I don’t know if it’s the process or what. If it is the process, I think the government should speed up the process,” said Asem Al-Sayed, vice president of the council.

Al-Sayed and others in the Syrian community would like to see the number of Syrian refugees coming to Canada bumped up — to somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000. And they, along with other refugee advocates, would like to see changes to program that would allow swifter arrivals.

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